Tent City (5 page)

“Brody, put your jacket on. We gotta go,” I order.

“Is Jack coming?” he asks.

“No, he’s not. I’m sure he’s got other places to go,” I say, as I toss Jack a can of peaches and some of the crackers.

“Deal is a deal. Thanks for fixing the four-wheeler, but we really have to be going.”

I glance up, and instead of the van continuing on, it has turned around and is headed back our way.

“Kit, let’s move!” I shout.

“Jack, you can ride with me,” she says, and I start to protest.

A worried look crosses his face and then he says, “Just for now. I’ll go my own way when we’ve cleared the area and given them the slip.”

“Fine, whatever.”

He actually drives Kit’s wheeler and we clear through a couple miles of forest area just outside the farmland. I don’t like having him with us. I can’t rid the feelings of warning telling me he’s no good and that he’s just looking for his chance to rob us and take us for what we’re worth.

There’s something he’s not telling us. He’s not just a regular drifter. His clothes are too nice and he’s a little too clean. I do feel good about the progress we are making though; we’ve got time to make up.

I check to make sure the knife I found at the bottom of my pack is tucked safely in the back of my pants. If it comes to it, I’ll do what I have to.

We have traveled a good couple of hours. I’m annoyed Jack and Kit haven’t stopped so we can let Jack go and be on our way. What is he thinking, anyway? That he can just get a free ride?

I also don’t feel comfortable with him knowing where we’re going. I’m sure by now, he’s looked at the maps and figured it out. It’s best no one knows where we’re going. What good is a safe hideaway if everyone is going to know about it?

Brody has gone quiet, so I signal to them to stop and make camp. Brody is actually being surprisingly easy to manage. He hasn’t been complaining, but I can tell he misses Mom. He has that whiny pouting face he makes just before bed. He must be confused by what’s going on. He’s never been away from her this long.

I start unpacking and I’m trying to find a nice way to send Jack on his way when he takes care of it for me.

“Well, I guess I’ll take off,” he says.

“Where are ya going?” Kit asks. She looks disappointed. I’m sure all she can think about is that she’s not going to get to wrap her arms around him for the next few days.

“Suppose anywhere. Just wanted to say thanks for the lift and the food. Oh, and don’t start a fire tonight. I think The Council is starting to tighten things up. It’s got that feel to it. They’ll probably be looking for anything. I might even turn myself in. I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t have much, so maybe this new program could be like a new beginning for me.”

“What?!” Kit and I ask in unison.

“The Council kind of has a bad rap. In some ways, we’d be a lot worse off without them. I mean, I get why you guys want to go with not being split up and everything. But for a guy like me with nothing to lose, it’s gotta beat wandering around here. Searching for something, anything, nothing.
”

He pauses for a second and runs his hands through his hair before he begins again, “I don’t know, maybe they can find me a job or something. What about you Kit? You got any brothers or sisters? Why do you want to get away so bad?”

“Why would I want to be sent off to a baby factory?” she asks, with the usual animation in her face. She would never be able to play a decent game of poker. Every emotion she ever has displays itself in her feminine features.  

“I think that’s just a rumor. They’re not going to force anyone to have babies. Maybe they’re just making it easier for the younger generation to meet and get the population going again. Is that the worst thing in the world? It might be easier to just go along… Now, you’re going to be on the run for the rest of your life. Is that any way to live?”

I can see her actually contemplating this. I don’t know how she could. She’s more of a free spirit than anyone I know. Well, except for maybe me. It’s one of the things that bonds us. We have been dreaming for a long time of making our own way in the world. How could she think being in a cage would be good?

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says.

Being locked up, is what I’m thinking.

“I don’t think it’s like a prison…It’s probably like a certain area of land designated for the purpose of letting life flourish. Ya know, making sure the younger generation has enough food, medical treatment…all those things we take for granted.”

“I don’t take any of that for granted and I’ve heard enough,” I say. “Let’s go Kit.”

“Kit?” he asks, and I’m pissed.

I don’t know if I’m just mad or a little jealous. Why isn’t he asking me? I mean, maybe he’s thinking of Brody and me staying together, but he still didn’t ask. Why does he have this magical way of thinking The Council is good? All I have ever known them to be is controlling and basically communist.

General Burke, which would be like our president, I guess, runs everything on his own. There are no checks or balances. If he thinks something is good for our country, he just does it. Sure, he has a lot of followers since he saved so many people from starvation. But I just don’t want to live like that, and any government that thinks it’s a good idea to take children from their families has got to be rotten.  

Kit hesitates longer than I would have liked, but ultimately she declines. He hops off and begins to wander in the direction opposite of us.

“That was weird, wasn’t it?” I ask Kit.

“Way weird, and just when I was thinking he was a total fox,” she smiles.

“I know. It’s almost like that just came out of the blue. Most of the drifters I’ve met can’t say enough bad things about The Council.”

“Well, let’s get camp set up. Brody looks exhausted,” she says, as she gently touches his cheek. “I think if we get up early tomorrow, we could be in this spot your dad marked for us by sunset, provided you don’t sink your wheeler in the mud again.”

Brody’s quiet as we fix up a few supplies of canned beef stew and some more crackers. I decide to rummage through the bag Mom packed for him and I find his trains. At this, he brightens and I feel just a little better about him being out here on the run. Before long, he has found his plane and is whirring the B-52 around camp. Watching him, I can almost pretend we are at home and he’s just running around the kitchen. Almost.

It’s already morning and I’m sore and in desperate need of a few more hours of rest.
  I wake to hear Kit brushing her teeth and clearing her throat of phlegm. Brody’s still sleeping, a leaf plastered to his cheek.

“You’re wasting the water,” I say, as she dumps a whole bottle over her toothbrush.

“So? It’s just water.”

“We don’t know if we’re going to have clean water up there. We don’t even know how long we’re going to be there. It’s not
just water
when you’re dying of thirst.”

She gives me a dirty look and then says, “Whatever.”

I ignore her and start going through the packs again. I see a radio I didn’t notice before.  I would like to turn it on and see what’s going on, but it will have to wait. We have ground to cover.

I seem to have gotten the hang of the wheeler and for most of the day it’s smooth sailing. Brody even seems to enjoy being with me and doesn’t seem to be missing Mom so much. He has created a game for himself counting animals he sees along the way. So far, he’s got a couple of deer and a few squirrels.  

If only he had an idea of what was going on. What I would give to be five and not have a care in the world.

I spend most of this day trying to sort out how all of this has gotten to be. Everyone knows it started with the stupid locusts seven years ago, wiping out every edible plant in their path. As destructive as they were, it didn’t last long. They had their fill, devouring everything in sight and then they died off.

A lot of people thought that this was a time of spiritual awakening and that God was trying to tell us something. But then it stopped at the locusts and people just simply starved because there was no food. Hard to see God in that. General Burke and his men say there are more plagues to come, but so far there haven’t been any. Just empty stomachs.
 

Things were bad for a while with lots of deaths, but it seemed like it stopped and things were finally getting better. So why were they starting relocation camps now? Hadn’t Burke fixed everything? I remember seeing him on the news a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about how we were coming into new, “more fruitful” times, I think he called it.

I don’t even know how he got to be the new president anyway. How is it that our old president could just “step down” and allow someone else to take over without even a vote? Isn’t there something in the constitution against that? How did they know everyone even wanted that?

Dad is always talking about America being a free country, but it feels a lot more like a dictatorship. What will the president do with all the kids who don’t want to go to the safety camps?

Will he throw them all in jail? I don’t see how that could do anyone any good. Some probably won’t even mind going to jail, the ones who had trouble getting enough food, or have no family left to care for them.

I can’t help but feel something needs to be done. But who is going to do it? The people who had rebelled against Burke before were “silenced quickly”, as Dad put it. But what does that mean anyway?

Were they killed, thrown into prison, or worse? One time I overheard Dad telling Mom that the way Burke controls the people is by making threats against family members. He said most aren’t afraid to die for what they believe in, but when it got down to it, they couldn’t bear to see their loved ones taken from them.

Just then up ahead of me, Kit stops her wheeler.

“I’m about out of gas and there’s no more left in the extra tanks,” she says.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

“I think we need to see if we can find a gas station. We have to get back to a main road.”

Why didn’t Dad think of this? Surely he must have known we would run out of gas, but he has no instructions for where we should go. We spend a couple of miles just getting out of the wooded areas, but now it seems to be clearing out. It looks like we might be getting closer to a highway.

“Up there!” Kit points, and in a couple more minutes, I can hear the occasional car on the highway.

We stop to try and make a plan of the best way to do this, and we agree we should go separately to fill up the tanks while one waits back with Brody. Most people don’t use money anymore, so I hand her a couple of the canned goods and she goes up first. Brody and I wait behind.

I get out some deer jerky and give it to Brody. He doesn’t seem to be hungry and a flash of worry crosses my mind. The last thing I need is for Brody to get sick. What would I even do?

Kit is taking forever. What could possibly be taking so long? What am I going to do if she doesn’t come back? Do I go in after her with Brody? Do I leave Brody behind while I go in? No, certainly not.  A half an hour has now passed. Finally, when I think I can’t take it anymore, I see her riding back.

“What took so long?!”

“Sorry,” she laughs. “I shouldn’t have taken so long, but everything’s fine. The people at the gas station are cool. Let’s go. We can all go back up there together. I promise they’re good.”

I ride up apprehensively, but Kit seems confident everything will be okay and I do feel better about us all being together. As soon as I pull up, I see a guy about our age come out to help me with the gas.